Do law students know (or believe) that we lawprofs
mean for the exam to be a rewarding educational experience?

Personally, I'd have to say not at all--except
perhaps in one instance.

This may have something to do with the fact that I
graduated from
law school three years before
Professor Althouse, and
did not have the advantages (if any) of the current trends in law school
pedagogical theory.

For the most part, I had the impression that my law
professors weren't trying to create the kind of experience she's describing.

In at least one instance, I thought the professor was
seeking affirmation of his own political leanings--and woe to the law student
who argued for any other result than what was clearly expected as a
liberal-oriented response.

It seemed that another professor was primarily happy to see
that his students mastered the
Gilbert Law Summary for the particular legal area covered in the course, as
opposed to anything that had been covered in class.

I say this because one of my housemates was registered in
the same course as I was, and attended it exactly twice--on the first day of
class and on the last day. He crammed for the final with a copy of the law
school equivalent of Cliff Notes,
and aced it.

On the other hand, I'd been to most of the classes, read
all the cases, and managed to eke out an infuriating C+ on the final.

Frankly, I did not feel particularly rewarded by this
combination of results, and still don't 28 years later. But I'm not bitter.

The one exception that came closest to Professor Althouse's
ideal was an ancient adjunct professor's final exam in Wills, Trusts, and
Estates.

The multi-part final set up several different situations.
In each case, we were expected to write out a cogent legal argument for a
particular result, and then provide an equally convincing argument for the
opposite side. We were then required to explain which side had the better legal
points in its favor, and why.

This examination came closest to matching what I eventually
realized was a highly useful intellectual exercise while engaged in the actual
practice of representing clients.

The fact that I was among the few who earned a very high
grade in that test may have also had something to do with my fond memories of
it--but I really do think it was a great way to engage law students in an
experiment that matched the thinking process that lawyers should follow in the
real world.

The alleged 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants already in
the United States present a daunting problem for anyone thinking about changing
this country's halting efforts at reforming its immigration policy.

That's why I applaud the efforts of
Mickey Kaus and others
who take a practical, serious approach to dealing with the immigration
equivalent of the elephant in the living room, while also looking to establish
reasonable enforcement programs.

For example, Kaus' explanation of the long-term benefits of
a real wall at the border to block or impede future illegal immigration makes a
lot of sense. It's even more acceptable when he ties it to a bona fide record
check of new hires, while recognizing that not insisting on similar record
checks for existing employees would essentially "grandfather" them into a form
of semi-legal status, addressed through an eventual formal guest worker program:

Would this "grandfathered" solution--leaving
existing illegals working in their current jobs--amount to legalization or
amnesty, and thus act as an incentive to would-be illegals still on the
other side of the border? I don't think so, because the benefit of
already being here--being left alone--would only be valuable
to the extent border controls were effective. If the border
remained porous, existing "grandfathered" illegal workers would only have
obtained the ability to avoid border controls that were meaningless
anyway. If the border controls weren't meaningless, would-be
illegals now in Latin America and elsewhere would have an
incentive to sneak into the country and work--in the hope of being
grandfathered-in later--but by the same token they'd have less ability
to do so. (They'd have to get over a wall and get around an
effective system of employer-based document verification.)

Kaus also recognizes that current illegals who change jobs
would then face the problem of somehow evading the risk of removal under a
toughened record check scheme, perhaps by shifting to the underground economy or
by self-deporting.

My only quibble with his suggestion is that he didn't seem
to address a different risk under this scheme. Some of those grandfathered
illegals could decide that their best bet is to stay in their existing jobs to
avoid the new enforcement policy. This would make them ripe for exploitation by
employers whose commitment to the bottom line is more powerful than their
commitment to the law.

I don't have a solution to that problem, which in some
respects is a continuation of some of the exploitation that occurs under the
current, fragmented approach to immigration law.

On the other hand, I do not want the search for a perfect
solution to block the application of a (mostly) good policy.

For a large part of the recent blog break, I was on a
fact-finding mission to Pinehurst, North Carolina.

The trip furnished plenty of material for a travelogue for
the golf column, which you can read
here.

A few other features about the trip didn't make their way
into the column, which is one of the reasons why this blog can be so handy.

For example, we played
The Pit, which as the name implies is an adaptive re-use of an old borrow
pit a few miles south of the Pinehurst Resort area.

It's hard to convey how confining some parts of this golf
course can be without using a photograph to illustrate it.

So, here's what golfers face on what's described as the
signature hole, a par-3 we played from 162 yards:

You can feel your shoulders squeezing in as you stand on
the tee--and that's not helpful for a good swing, by the way.

There were also some potentially useful lessons learned
during this trip.

For example, here's a par-3 hole on the East Course at the
Foxfire Resort:

If you hit your tee shot just to the right of
the large tree you can see standing to the immediate left of the green, the ball will bounce right and roll to within a foot of
the hole for a tap-in birdie.

That's how I played it, anyway.

However, if you hit your tee shot 2-3 feet left of
that point, it will stay behind the tree, forcing at least a bogey.

That's how my friend Nick played it.

He seemed to think there's something unfair about this.

Even so, it's not as if I didn't have similar tales of woe
on other occasions.

For example, here's a picture of the ninth hole at
The National Golf Club, a
difficult Jack Nicklaus design in Pinehurst:

Based on recent personal experience, if a 5-iron is hit
into the wind with a nice draw from the
blue tees, the ball will
land on the green.

It will then bounce twice and drop into the pond
behind the green,
one yard past the edge of the back side.

Official small print disclaimer: This is, after all, a personal web site. Any
opinions or comments I express here are my own, and don't necessarily reflect the official
position of my work as a government attorney or any of my clients.

That fact may become obvious later on,
but it needs to be said here anyway.